Catching up in Germany

The truth is that no company will always be 100% secure in cyberspace. On a recent trip to Germany I had a drink with my former co-worker Andreas, who is the new Head of R&D at a global car manufacturer there. Andreas told me his company doesn’t have a Chief Product Security Officer, which is the equivalent role to a CISO in the R&D space.

On a recent trip to Germany I had a drink with my former co-worker Andreas, who is the new Head of R&D at a global car manufacturer there.

Andreas told me his company doesn’t have a Chief Product Security Officer, which is the equivalent role to a CISO in the R&D space. However, it turns out that the company he works for has a particular interest in cybersecurity, as it develops and builds cars of the future.

At the start of the year, Capgemini had contacted Andreas to talk about its new automotive sector cybersecurity offering. Andreas’ company had already implemented some security measures for its IT infrastructure, its manufacturing systems and even its products in relation to the “Connected Vehicle” concept. But it lacked both a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy and a common set of standards.

As Head of R&D, Andreas knows about the threats posed by poor cybersecurity—particularly relating to connected vehicles, with all their inherent embedded systems and applications. So, when Capgemini proposed a small-scale security assessment, Andreas took them up on it.

He had already looked at other offerings in the automotive sector, but felt these were poorly defined. Capgemini, on the other hand, addressed all three areas of connected vehicle, manufacturing and enterprise IT in a solution built around the paradigm of defense-in-depth. Andreas was convinced that they could create a holistic, sector-specific solution.

The truth is that no company will always be 100% secure in cyberspace. Nonetheless, Andreas and I agreed that with both of our companies working with Capgemini, we were now in a better place than many of our counterparts. Cheers, Andreas!

Need to know more about Capgemini sector-specific cybersecurity? Head this way…